Eta
Carinae is among the largest, most volatile stars in our galaxy. Its
temperature is so high that it is unable to hold onto its own gas, with
constant streams being ejected from the surface. It first came to attention
in 1843 when it flared to magnitude -0.8, becoming the second brightest
star in the night sky.

It subsequently
died down, before brightening again in the late 1990s. This fluctuation
continues – with periodic flaring and dimming – until one day the inevitable
happens. Unable to maintain its cohesion, Eta Carinae erupts into one
of the deadliest known forces in nature: a hypernova.

For a brief
period, this colossal explosion outshines the entire galaxy. It is bright
enough to be visible during daytime on Earth, while at night, it is
similar to the full moon.*

Of much
greater concern, however, are the lethal jets of gamma radiation released
by the dying star. These begin to shoot outward, at such high energies
that even systems thousands of light years away are affected. As a result,
numerous planets in our region of the galaxy undergo mass extinctions
during this time.*

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Dana Berry

12,000 AD

Our Sun is exiting the Local Interstellar Cloud

The Local Interstellar Cloud (also known as the "Local Fluff") is a cloud of neutral hydrogen 30 light years across and flowing outwards from the Scorpius-Centaurus Association, a nearby star-forming region. The Solar System is thought to have entered the Local Interstellar Cloud sometime between 150,000 BC and 42,000 BC. Its density is about six times greater than the Local Bubble – a much larger region measuring 300 light years in diameter that surrounds both it and the G-Cloud, another cloud of gas.

In 2009, Voyager 2 data suggested that the magnetic strength of the local interstellar medium was much stronger than previously expected (3.7 to 5.5 μG, against previous estimates of 1.8 to 2.5 μG). The fact that the Local Interstellar Cloud is strongly magnetised was said to explain its continued existence, despite the pressures exerted upon it by the winds that blew out the Local Bubble. Its potential effects on Earth were prevented by the solar wind and the Sun's magnetic field.

By 12,000 AD, our Sun has exited the Local Interstellar Cloud and is heading towards the neighbouring G-Cloud, which contains the stars Alpha Centauri, Proxima Centauri and Altair.*

Click to enlarge

19,500 AD

Betelgeuse is colliding with a dusty wall

Betelgeuse is the nearest red supergiant star to Earth. It can be seen with the naked eye in the northern hemisphere winter night sky as the orange-red star above and to the left of Orion's famous three-star belt. Roughly 1,000 times the diameter and 100,000 times the brightness of the Sun, Betelgeuse is on its way to becoming a supernova, having already swelled in size and shed a significant fraction of its outer layers.

The star's winds are crashing against the surrounding interstellar medium, producing a curved "bow shock" as the star moves through space at 30 km/s. A series of broken, dusty arcs ahead of the star's direction of motion testify to a turbulent history of mass loss.

In the early 21st century, the Herschel Space Observatory found a mysterious wall-like structure in far-infrared. It was seen further away from the star, beyond the dusty arcs, its linear shape indicating that it was completely separate from and unrelated to Betelgeuse. It was, however, being illuminated by the supergiant. Astronomers of the time believed it was either a linear filament linked to the Galaxy's magnetic field, or the edge of a nearby interstellar cloud.

In 7000 AD, a collision occurs between the wall and the bow shock zone. This is followed by a collision between the wall and Betelgeuse itself, some 12,500 years later.*

Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/L. Decin et al

22,000 AD

The
Chernobyl disaster site becomes fully safe

The
Chernobyl explosion, which occurred in 1986, was the worst nuclear accident
in history – affecting tens of thousands of square kilometres of land.
Radiation at the centre of the former disaster zone has decayed to negligible
levels by now.*

Chernobyl radiation hotspots. Credit: CIA

30,000 AD

The
first wave of sub-light vessels has reached the galactic core

The
core region is located 27-28,000 light years from Earth. At its centre
lies the largest black hole in the galaxy – a supermassive black hole.* Having travelled for many millennia, the first wave of sub-light spacecraft
has now arrived in its vicinity.

These ships
contain no physical human crew, being entirely computerised and automated.
Numbering in the trillions, they have self-replicated along the way,
using local stellar and planetary material gathered en route.* Systems encountered during this epic voyage have become seeded with
computational substrates and saturated with artificial intelligence
– individual planets and moons becoming like brain cells in a gigantic,
artificial organism. It is almost as though the galaxy itself is waking
up and achieving self-awareness.*

There is
no competition or battle to claim ownership of the core. Wars, greed
and archaic concepts of nationality have long since disappeared, with
sentient beings now united under a common heritage.

Credit: NASA

In addition
to the black hole, there are dense concentrations of ancient, metal-rich
stars; in places separated by only a few light weeks or light days.
These provide an enormous pool of resources for the approaching fleets.

Gamma radiation
is so high in this region that almost nothing biological can survive,
except for the hardiest of extremophile bacteria. Were an observer able
to stand on a planet near the core, the sky above them would appear
as a dazzling display of light and colour.

Having
reached the galactic centre, efforts are now underway to explore the
far side of the galaxy and the mysteries that lie beyond. Dozens of
globular clusters have also been reached by now.*

Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Schaller (for STScI)

35,000 AD

Ross
248 becomes the closest star to our Sun

Alpha
Centauri was previously the closest star. Ross 248 is a red dwarf, with
approximately 12% of the Sun's mass and 16% of the Sun's radius, but
only 0.2% of its luminosity. However – it is also a "flare star",
that periodically undergoes sudden, dramatic increases in brightness
for a few minutes.

In 2010,
Ross 248 was 10.3 light years from Earth, with a radial velocity of
-81 km/s. By 35,000 AD, it is closer than Alpha Centauri. It reaches
its closest point in 38,000 AD – moving to within 3.1 light years –
before receding again, becoming further from the Sun than Alpha Centauri
in 44,000 AD.

42,000 AD

Voyager
1 is passing near the red dwarf star, AC+79 3888

Launched
by NASA in 1977, the Voyager I space probe continues to drift through
interstellar space. It is now passing near AC+79
3888, an M-type main sequence star in the constellation of Camelopardalis,
close to Polaris.* Its sister probe, Voyager
2, will reach Sirius in approximately 298,000
AD.

52,000 AD

Tetrafluoromethane emissions from 2000 AD have been naturally reabsorbed

Tetrafluoromethane, also known as carbon tetrafluoride (CF4) is the longest-lived of all the greenhouse gases. Like other fluorocarbons, CF4 is very stable due to the strength of its carbon–fluorine bonds. Although structurally similar to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), it does not deplete the ozone layer. However, its heat-trapping potential is extremely high – roughly 11,200 times that of CO2 when measured on a per-molecule basis over a 500-year timescale.* Circa 2000 AD, the atmospheric concentration of CF4 was 80 parts per trillion. The main applications were as a low temperature refrigerant, in electronics microfabrication, as a plasma etchant (in combination with oxygen) and in neutron detectors.

KEO
was a time capsule launched in 2015 and intended to orbit Earth for
50,000 years – the same length of time that had elapsed since
early humans began drawing in cave walls. The project
was supported by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) as well as the European Space Agency (ESA) and other institutions.

The public
were invited to contribute messages.* These
were encoded in glass-made, radiation-resistant DVDs, along with instructions
to future generations on how to build a DVD reader. Samples of human
blood, earth, air and seawater were also placed on board.

The capsule
itself is a hollow sphere, 80cm in diameter. The sphere is engraved
with a map of Earth and surrounded by an aluminium layer, a thermal
layer and several layers of titanium, intertwined with vacuum. The sphere
is resistant to cosmic radiation, atmospheric re-entry and space junk
impacts.

Placed
into orbit 1,800 km high, the satellite's altitude has slowly degraded
by a few dozen metres each year. As it finally re-enters the atmosphere,
its thermal layer produces a bright, artificial aurora to signal its
return.

100,000 AD

The
red hypergiant star, VY Canis Majoris, has exploded by now, producing
one of the largest supernovas the galaxy has ever seen*

VY
Canis Majoris, at between 1800 and 2100 times bigger than our Sun (8.4–9.8
au, 2.7 billion km or 1.7 billion miles in radius), is the largest known
star in the Milky Way, and also one of the brightest known. It is located
around 4,900 light years from Earth, in the constellation Canis Major. It
was discovered to be very unstable, throwing off much of its mass into
the surrounding nebula. By 100,000 it has finally exploded, creating
a supernova bright enough to be seen during daylight hours on Earth.

200,000 AD

Constellations visible from Earth have been rendered unrecognisable

Proper motion – the continuous movement of celestial bodies due to changing orbits or the remaining effects of the Big Bang – has radically changed the view of the night sky from Earth. Stars naturally move at different velocities, depending on the manner in which a star formed from its original dust cloud. By 50,000 AD, constellations were beginning to be twisted and bent into new shapes* and by 200,000 AD have become completely unrecognisable.* This includes once famous groups of stars like the Big Dipper, Orion, Ursa Major, Perseus and Gemini. As a result of changes in Earth's axial orientation, Gamma Cephei, Iota Cephei and Vega have taken the position of the North Star.

298,000 AD

Voyager
2 is approaching Sirius

Voyager
2 was an unmanned space probe launched in 1977 to investigate the outer
planets of the solar system. Identical in form and function with its
sister craft, Voyager 1, it was launched on
a slower, more curved trajectory that allowed it to be kept in the plane
of the ecliptic. This enabled it to be sent on to Uranus and Neptune
by means of utilising gravity assists during its fly-by of Saturn in
1981 and of Uranus in 1986.

By 2010,
Voyager 2 was around 92 AU (13.75 billion km, 8.5 billion miles, or
0.001443 ly) from the Sun, deep in the scattered disc, and traveling
outward at roughly 3.26 AU per year.

The probe
survives for thousands of years in the emptiness of interstellar space.
It eventually passes by Sirius, having covered a distance of over 25
trillion miles.* Sirius is the brightest
star in the sky when viewed from Earth.

2 It is unlikely that Earth would be affected. Even if the gamma ray jets
point in our direction, the solar system will likely be protected by a Dyson
shell (or similar giant structure) by then. Less developed colonies
in other star systems might not be so fortunate, however.

3 "Our Sun may exit the Local Cloud, also called the Local Fluff, during the next 10,000 years."See Astronomy Picture of the Day, NASA:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130924.html
Accessed 19th January 2014.

4 "...the outermost arc will collide with the bar in just 5000 years, with the red supergiant star itself hitting the bar roughly 12,500 years later."See Betelgeuse Braces for a Collision: Red Supergiant Star to Crash Into Dusty 'Wall', Science Daily:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122105615.htm
Accessed 24th January 2013.

5 "There is a 17 mile Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl where officially
nobody is allowed to live, but people do. These "resettlers"
are elderly people who lived in the region prior to the disaster. Today
there are approximately 10,000 people between the ages of 60 and 90 living
within the Zone around Chernobyl. Younger families are allowed to visit,
but only for brief periods of time.

"Eventually
the land could be utilized for some sort of industrial purpose that would
involve concrete sites. But estimates range from 60–200 years before
this would be allowed. Farming or any other type of agricultural industry
would be dangerous and completely inappropriate for at least 200 years.
It will be at least two centuries before there is any chance the situation
can change within the 1.5-mile Exclusion Zone. As for the #4 reactor where
the meltdown occurred, we estimate it will be 20,000 years before the
real estate is fully safe."

8 "We will ultimately saturate all of the matter and energy in our
area of the universe with our intelligence... All of this dumb matter
and energy around us will wake up and become sublimely intelligent. Then
it will spread out to the whole universe at the fastest speed information
can flow. And one could make an argument that it’s not going to
take an infinitely long time because there may be other ways to get to
other parts of the universe through shortcuts like wormholes, which physics
has postulated. Eventually the whole universe will, essentially, wake
up."The technology of universal intelligence, KurzweilAI:http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-technology-of-universal-intelligence
Accessed 12th February 2011.